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Engineer white paper - into the objective force

Engineer: The Professional Bulletin for Army Engineers - April 1, 2002

Engineers are a full-spectrum force for change. During the past year of so, we have all become familiar with the "trident" chart pictured below. It is Chief of Staff of the Army General Eric K. Shinseki's vision of how our Army must transform over the next 30 years. Engineers are fully involved in all three legs of the trident-the Legacy, Interim, and Objective Forces. Our involvement extends from the very tip of the spear all the way back to the sustaining base and includes elements of the soldiers and civilians working in the Active Component, Reserve Component, and Corps of Engineers. No other Regiment has that broad a band of responsibility. In past White Papers, our priority has been the Legacy and Interim legs of the trident. In this paper, our priority shifts to the third leg, the Objective Force.

The Objective Force

As a quick review, let us recall that the Objective Force is to have the deployability of the Interim Force with the lethality and survivability of today's Legacy Force. Beyond that, it will enable us to fight in a whole new way, using total situational overmatch and precision engagement. Built around the Future Combat System (FCS), the Objective Force will also include the Comanche helicopter and the Crusader field artillery cannon. Units will be structured as "units of action" (UA) and "units of employment" (UE). The Army is using these new designations to get us to think about unit organizations other than the platoons, companies, battalions, brigades, divisions, and corps with which we have all grown comfortable. UAs--roughly analogous to today's battalion and brigade combat teams--are tomorrow's maneuver units. UEs--roughly analogous to today's divisions and/or corps-are tomorrow's planners, synchronizers, and supporters.

The force made up of UAs and UEs will be lighter than today's force and easily deployed anywhere in the world within 96 hours. It will have superior firepower, networked together and capable of engaging any threat from beyond the threat's capability to engage us. Situational awareness and understanding of the entire battlefield is an integral part of its survivability and lethality. With this information, we stop reacting to obstacles as we encounter them and start making decisions based on the ability, capability, and intent of the enemy to emplace an obstacle. In this way, we are reacting to information, not just obstacles on the ground.

Envision a typical heavy armored division on today's battlefield, a division equivalent perhaps to one of our divisions in Operation Desert Storm. The commander of that division knows where all of his units are located and knows their capabilities. He wants to know where we are located as well. Now, think of us entering the battlefield in about the same strength as today's maneuver brigade. It doesn't seem a very fair fight, but in the Objective Force, we will not only know where all of our units are located, we will have a complete picture of where all of the Republican Guard units are located as well. And, with our precision strike and other capabilities, we will start blinding the threat before we land, taking down his command and control nodes so he loses touch with his own units. Our brigade-sized unit--the UA--will engage each of the threat's units in turn from standoff distances. Because the threat commander no longer has the ability to keep in touch with his own units--let alone target ours--our smal ler, lighter force will quickly roll up the much larger unit. The Republican Guard commander may not even know we have landed until we are knocking at the door to his headquarters. That, in a nutshell, is the theory of the Objective Force.

Where does this unparalleled situational understanding come from? It comes from sensors and databases, all networked together and available to the soldier on the ground or as he flies to the battlefield. The Global Information Grid (GIG), an element of the Objective Force, is an integrated, interoperable digital information infrastructure supporting the strategic, operational, and tactical information and intelligence needs for our warfighters. Whatever information we need will be available to us from the GIG. Future improved versions of our Digital Topographic Support System (DTSS) and the Maneuver Control System (MCS) will feed information into, and receive information from, the GIG. Data from the intelligence community, national intelligence assets, and other military and civilian information providers will also be fed into the GIG, fused at some point and fed back on demand. We may receive digital geospatial information and imagery in the middle of an Asian jungle from a French, Russian, or even a commer cial satellite.

Organizational structures are still being designed, but current UA designs have engineers embedded within the UA itself, as if today's tank battalion had its own organic engineer platoon. Many engineer "capabilities" will be performed by nonengineer personnel or organizations and may be built into equipment designs (for example, blast mitigating hulls on the FCS). There will be extensive use of robotic systems to perform the dangerous missions of countermine and reconnaissance, to name only two.

UE organizations are still being designed. It is our intent for engineer UE organizations to be modular offspring of today's echelon-above-division (EAD) and echelon-above-corps (EAC) battalion-sized organizations, existing within the UE to support the UA. Some of these modules will be specialized teams. These engineers will be supporting not only U.S. forces but also coalition forces and other governmental and nongovernmental organizations and will be needed to restore facilities to the local population and government. Special "urban infrastructure" organizations and technical or specialized augmentation support teams/cells are likely to be needed for such things as power generation and distribution, sanitary sewers, and water- and gas-distribution nets, in addition to execution of environmental baseline surveys and integration actions. Contractors will most likely provide a good deal of this support.

New Objective Force Tasks

Our work with the Objective Force has already introduced a new concept--assured mobility. Today, our forces avoid obstacles when possible and breach them when necessary, but tend to react to minefields and other obstacles as they approach them. Assured mobility is a combined-arms proactive approach to mobility in which we use information to maximize avoidance and prevent enemy actions that inhibit mobility. Computer algorithms are used along with intelligence, geospatial information, and weather data to identify numerous routes to the objective and to predict likely obstacles along each of those routes. The task force then maneuvers along multiple, dispersed, parallel routes to the objective. In this manner, minefields are no longer as prevalent, and we can handle them at standoff without changing our momentum. The slow, methodical breaching of minefields that we must practice today becomes the exception rather than the rule. This is how it works:

* See First--We develop the mobility common operating picture (COP) by integrating terrain, imagery, and intelligence to determine potential operating areas.

* Understand First--We select, establish, and maintain operating areas by identifying or predicting potential obstacles and booby traps, enemy staging areas, threat avenues of approach and egress, and emplacement methods using standoff detection means. We then "swarm" surveillance assets to cover suspected areas. Sensor nets allow us to detect enemy movements and actions, which cues validation sensors to suspected activity. The sensors then track the enemy and provide a detailed COP to our engagement systems.

* Act First--We swarm surveillance assets to attack the enemy's ability to influence our operating areas before he has a chance to place mines into or onto the ground, and we neutralize any overwatching observation and fires in order to deal with mines or booby traps out of contact.

* Finish Decisively--The cumulative effect of See First, Understand First, and Act First allows us to mass forces arriving on multiple routes to Finish Decisively Mobility actions such as breaching and bridging are included.

With this shift in emphasis, we have also changed our priority for materiel development. Three tailored lists have replaced the single "1-n" list you have seen in the past, one for each of the three forces.

Objective Force 1-n List

1. Mobility Information System

2. Standoff Mine Detection

3. Standoff Mine Neutralization

4. Brilliant Sensor-Munition

5. FCS-Mobility Variant

6. Maneuver Support Bridging Suite

7. Rapidly Deployable Construction Equipment

8. Terrain Shaping Munition

9. Demolition Modernization

10. Infrastructure Construction Equipment

The Interim Force

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